Blood & ivy : the 1849 murder that scandalized Harvard

The Resource Blood & ivy : the 1849 murder that scandalized Harvard

Label

Blood & ivy : the 1849 murder that scandalized Harvard

Title remainder

the 1849 murder that scandalized Harvard

Statement of responsibility

Paul Collins

Title variation

Blood and ivy

Language

eng

Summary

Traces the scandalous murder of a Harvard Medical School graduate and the ensuing trial that riveted mid-nineteenth-century America, exploring how the case established important precedents in medical forensics and the definition of reasonable doubt
"On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and offered hefty rewards as leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never even left the Medical School building alive. His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor's laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment--of Harvard's greatest doctors investigating one of their own, for a murder hidden in a building full of cadavers--it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case. Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America's greatest murder mysteries."--Dust jacket

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

364.152/3092

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HV6534.B6

LC item number

C65 2018

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Context

Context of Blood & ivy : the 1849 murder that scandalized Harvard

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Normal Public Library. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.

Context

Work of